Thursday, November 7, 2013

An Open Letter To Astronomers Everywhere: The Onus Is On You To Show Us Uranus

I'm getting old. You know how I know? Two reasons:

1) I'm getting smarter. Like, a lot smarter. I think I know pretty much everything there is to know now. In fact, I know I do. It's a good feeling, being omniscient, I gotta tell you;

2) When I ride around the city all I think about is what used to be wherever I am. It's kind of pathetic. Basically, I'm wandering around in a sort of Proustian haze, which I guess is why old people are so annoying. "Look at that beard oil shop, I remember when it was a deli that sold weed," I think to myself. "Check out these tourists studying a touristy map of touristy Brooklyn at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, I remember when the only people you'd find standing around here were the Muslims selling bean pies:"

Of course, this is only compounded by my newfound omniscience, which allows me to see beyond time and space. For example, as the tourists above scrutinized the map, I rolled up behind them, cleared my throat and announced, "I remember when there was no bridge here and all you'd find was Walt Whitman waiting for a ferry and quietly wanking." It even gets so bad that sometimes I'll stop at a red light, look around, sigh, and say to myself, "I remember when all of this was Pangaea."

(Those were the days, because fuck bridges.)

Nostalgia continued to plague me into the evening yesterday when I ducked into Central Park. There was a time when the park used to be empty after dark because everyone was afraid of the wilding and the wanking Walt Whitmans, but if you headed there on your bike on a crisp weekday evening you could join a massive group ride that would whip through the park at race pace, which was a pretty good way to unwind after a workday. Pretty much every character in New York City who rode a bike fast would be there. But then the local racing club killed it because the park threatened their private members-only races, and Freds got way into training indoors during the winter anyway because it was "more effective" for their private members-only races, and now it's long gone.

Still, is there anything better than riding in Central Park at night?

Well, yeah, sure, there are like a million things that are better. Still, it's one of the finer New York City cycling experiences. One moment you're in Midtown dodging and parrying the taxicabs, and the next you're on this serene loop, the leaves skittering along the pavement and the greatest city in the world twinkling at you from beyond the trees.

(Yes, you can see Cleveland through the trees in Central Park.)

Anyway, it was very pleasant, until I saw some dork wearing a teardrop helment and riding a time trial bike and I got all pissed off because he was such a dork.

Anonymous said...That stupid engineer stole the design from clickstand. They have been building them for years now. What great idea. They even have started making them in different colors. For a cyclist unable to organize his cockpit correctly. Did we really think he has the brains to have an original thought?NOVEMBER 6, 2013 AT 6:24 PM

This led me to wonder if they actually sell recumbents without kickstands, because that seems about as smart as selling a motorcycle without a kickstand.

Anyway, even though the Fred Stand is slightly different (i.e. shorter), I'm tremendously disappointed in the so-called "inventor," especially since he seems to have earned well over a thousand dollars since I mentioned him yesterday, and it's pretty clear to me now that he doesn't deserve it and that money should be mine.

So basically, the Roof Brain is for people who ride their bikes while they're completely tripping balls and then proceed to drive home, where they forget to take their bikes off their roof racks.

Of course, there's also the requisite "social networking component," and this one allows you to share low clearance areas with other Roof Brain users:

I don't know, to me the best part about remembering to take your bike off the roof before driving into that parking structure is that you avoided some trap that will inevitably fell some other shmuck, and to me helping someone avoid it too completely undermines my sense of smug satisfaction.

If anything, I'd go around falsely labeling random areas as low clearance so people's Roof Brains start sounding unnecessarily. In fact, if this Roof Brain thing takes off, I may tag the entire I-95 corridor before Gloucester next year.

Also, for those of you who remember Rasmussen's disastrous Tour de France time trial in 2005, he says it's because his mechanic was girl drink drunk:

Furthermore he blames the team’s mechanic for ruining his chances of finishing on the podium in 2005. Rasmussen claims the mechanic was drunk on champagne before the penultimate time trial stage. He lost over seven minutes to stage winner Lance Armstrong, slipping from third to seventh overall.
And here's that time trial again:

The great thing about individual time trial crashes is that you can generally laugh at them, because not only do they rarely involve injury to the rider, but also the pointy hats.

By the way, after the champagne incident, Rasmussen tried to fist the mechanic:

“I saw our mechanic in a chair sleeping off his champagne hangover. I put my bike against the truck and walked his way. I was three metres from the guy with my fists ready when Erik Dekker pulled me away."

Portland Police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said Cansler was picked up at a bus shelter near Southeast 122nd Avenue and Southeast Division Street after a passerby spotted him and called 911. He was charged with theft, possession of meth and probation violation.The tall yellow bike was stolen from Olive Rootbeer and Dingo Dizmal on Oct. 24.

Reading that makes me so incredibly grateful that I don't live in Portland.

So what does Olive Rootbeer think?

“It’s not fair that he took my bike and there was no consequence for it. He needs to face the consequences for being, like, mean to a clown,” said Rootbeer.

Laugh if you will, but the penalty for being mean to a clown in the state of Oregon is death.

Death.

Hopefully they follow this report up with a story about why clowns in Portland look like they've been sleeping outdoors for two weeks.

Rasmussen worries me on many levels, but the 'three metres' is just sinister. Damn continentals with their metric system.Anyhoo, interesting article here; cyclists have always been on the front lines… and so much material for the Kickstarter crowd to pretend thay have invented - folding bike you can parachute with, built-in rifle holders…

Rasmussen really is an asshole, no one ever liked him at any time ever, he's like anorexic Robs Fords. And, like Blob Fjord, he used the "drunken stupor" defence, the finest legal chicanery since the Chewbacca defence.

Letterman..WTF he used to be funny, now he trods out on stage and makes fart sounds, then walks off and some guy from CBS gives him a cheque for $680,000. He sounds like a white Bill Cosby, applauded by the well-its-something-to-do-in-NY tourist crowd.

I think that there are some details about your testicles that are revealing about your advancing age as well. Tensile strength, displacement, etc.

I am still not over the "Darkens with exposure to Methane." From Crosspalms quote. That kind of thing lingers with you.

Your blog yesterday did inspire me to just get on the bike and go for a ride. So thanks for that. Out here in the hinterlands we only have to worry about aggressive dogs and skitzy White-tails. I avoided both. And then lifted a dark beer in the direction of your screwy newly-mayored metropolis.

Woohoo, epic commute this morning in the torrential rain! Er, baronal? My bus riding klatch texted that I was Samuraian, but Samurais don't wear rain gear. My Antibyrnesian transportation device called me a biketard. And to think, before the internets I would only have just been riding my bike. Bun no video, so didn't happen. [sigh]

The Armstrong movie..I would avoid that on Netflix, even Crackle. There, I said it.

****Blob Ford daily update****

Remember that video that he said never existed, and then it did, and then he admitted he was fucked up crack on it, remember? Well, apparently there are _two_ more videos from people who thought it was hilarious to video record their fucked up Mayor.

I dare you to make up more fun shit than this...it would be like finding of photo Dorothy Rabinowicz giving Tulio Campagnolo a blow job in 1938, or the lost David Byrne Hummer H1 Commercial from 1998.

At this point, Fords can commit pyronecropedaphilia on video, he'll say "I was 'faced. You gotta let it slide", and his popularity will soar amongst his base, (otherwise known as the intellectual elite of Toronto).

I found an international sighting of your favorite time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork (Bret) in a review of a Rennstahl touring bike (the rider in their review is no stranger to performance enhancing drugs). Looks like he sells lube too.

Make that 1940s perhaps. Somebody with free time (retired clown?) and music arranging talent needs to write an Andrews-sisters-style swing vocal trio using only the words of Fords' dining-room rant as the lyrics.

CD - Mr. Deleted - Yes definitely, I should clarify, pyro-ski-necro-heli-pedo-para-bestio-petro-sodomizing elephant seals is wrong for me, but what other people and seals do with their bodies is their own business!

Roof brain. Wow. Just what I needed. Another electronic device to tell my location-enabled smartphone that I'm about to hit something. Why don't I just program my phone to do that? I could even program in low hanging potted plants that get in the way of my walking/texting. Then I would never have to look up. Brilliant!

Regarding the Roof Brain thing -- My own system to keep from driving into the garage with a bike on the roof rack is pretty simple, cheap, and requires no social networking. When I'm loading a bike up onto my roof, I put a traffic cone in front of the garage door. When I get home, I have to get out of the car and move the cone before I can drive into the garage. Simple.

A couple of self-adoring hipsters with stupid made up names dumping on some outcast derelict, without the least bit of self-consciousness, because he made a grab for their piece-of-junk bicycle, does unfortunately speak volumes about something, the which I'm too discouraged to think more about it.

Omniscience sucks. Knowing everything is really really boring. Nothing can ever be new and novel and there's nothing that ever will be. Your actions and aspirations are rendered pointless as you already know the outcome and every single detail of every single step along the way.

So every single aspect of an omniscient's entire life is a meaningless and ostentatious display serving no worthwhile purpose other than perhaps cheap titillation -- much like bathing beauties painfully wearing a forced smile as they sashay around a boxing ring between rounds holding aloft a large board displaying the number of the next round.

Omnipotence, on the other hand, is awesome. Except when people mishear you and think you're impotent.

It'll be like the frog in hot water. Turn up the heat to fast and the frog will jump out, turn up the heat slowly and the frog will stay in tills it's too late.

On the other hand, it may be a wash when compared with the previous administration.

For example, Bloomberg wanted to ban large soft drinks. I figured he owns stock in Dixie cups or the beverage supplier. There'd be way more profit to be made selling lots of little drinks instead of few large cups.

Oh my god. Those clowns were extra scary. Scary in the sense that you hate being a member of the same species as them. THey are polluting our entire species with their high school drama club hobo fey act. I wish that Jessie Pinkman dude had stolen their brains so that they couldn't appear on local tv news and totally creep me out.

If Jesus had worn a helmet I'm sure he would have had a light on it because, like he was The Light Duder for sure, but like when I have a problem I just say to myself, 'What would Rob Ford do?' and like you know I always just end up smoking crack.

Lights on the helment are a must for riding off road at night. The light on your bike shines on where the bike is pointed, and the light on the helment illuminates the trail where you are looking. Silly city folk.

An interesting discussion, because stripping aside CJ's hunter-gatherer theories he read about in the 11th grade, Man seeks to be like G-d, and the defining characteristics of G-d are omnipotence and omnipresence.

What offers such traits to mere mortals? The internet, that's what. Apparently, the internet is G-d, and not just a repository for funny cat videos.

The hellmeat light works the same for urban/sub-urban (maybe even subterranean)commutarding. Going around bends, looking for potholes, seeking bunnies - the bar lights don't follow your gaze. The headmount also helps get certain eye contact with half-aware drivers. Plus they look dorky as hell.

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!